Labuhan Bajo and the Komodo National Park

July 15th – 17th.

The Gardena Hotel had only one room available, and as it’s the cheapest hotel I could find with a room, I took it. One bungalow, one bed, a simple shower and no windows. There is a fan though, which is the only solution for mosquitoes really. Anyways, this gives me an opportunity to shower and update the blog as well.

I booked a diving trip tomorrow, there’s actually more diving shop than there are hotels here, and they all sell at the same price, 800.000rupiah. I guess the difference is in the service. Since diving at 30m means I will rely on scuba gear, I’d rather go with an Australian owned shop, at least we have the same level of “basic safety”. So “Dive Komodo” it is.

My only worry so far is the ticket booth for the ferry to Sumbawa opens at 7AM, and I have to be at the dive shop at 7:20AM. So I got up at 6AM to make sure I could get both in time but after queuing for half an hour, I decided to head back to the shop, and get the tickets tomorrow, for the day after. I still have to shop for the next few days, get groceries etc, and there is no way I can do it all in such a short time.

After buying the entry ticket to the Komodo National Park, we got to the boat and sailed to the islands. The trip takes about 90minutes, during which I chatted with my fellow divers. There’s only three of us with the “Advanced Open Waters” certification (in fact I have the “level 2” certification with the French association, which equals to something just between the PADI Advanced Open Waters and the PADI Rescue Diver, both federations are equally worthy, they just don’t have the same criterias to award certificates. But I digress), so it looks like we’ll be diving in a group of four, which to me is a maximum before I feel crowded. The rest of the tourist are divided into two groups, the “Open Waters” and the beginners.

Once we reached the first dive spot, we got our gear on, and dived straight in. I could probably have taken the top of my wetsuit off, as the water is a comfy 28degrees Celsius, but nevermind, at least I can enjoy the scenery without sucking on oxygen to keep warm. The place is great, there’s at least the same variety of corals as in New Cal, if not more. I did spot a few species I’d never seen before, but I can never remember the names of these things, or the fishes I see. All I can tell you is there are a lot more turtles (close to 15), a lot less sharks (only two), and many new varieties of nudibranches. I loved it. And at 32m, the visibility is still as clear as daylight, it’s amazing how clear the water actually is. I was expecting a lot more sand and stuff after the two days of rain we just had, but it’s like diving in mineral water.

Lunch was served after the second dive and we headed to shore afterwards. Back at the hotel, I couldn’t be bothered to go out again for dinner so I just had the “burger special” at the hotel’s restaurant, a beer and off to bed.

Once again, the muezzin woke me up at four AM, the mosk is only 50m from my bungalow, and he calls for prayers every four hours. Great. Back to sleep til 6AM than a monkey woke me up by jumping on the roof, so I go up. After a quick breakfast and making sure my car was registered for tomorrow’s shiping trip to Sape, on Sumbawa, I went to town to shop around. It’s only 10AM and it’s already bloody hot. And my aircon does not work anymore, it’s been out since Alice Springs I think. Still, I found what I wanted most: a portable gas stove, a small one, just enough to get coffee in the morning. Awesome! Then a couple more stops for groceries and the ATM, I’m now at the port, where I’ll spend the night to make sure I get onboard tomorrow morning. The ship will leave at 8AM and get to Sape round 4 in the afternoon. That should give me enough time to get out of Sape and find a quiet spot for the night. I don’t intend to linger too much on Sumbawa, everybody tells me it’s the least interesting island in the country, and I have a date in Kuala Lumpur in less than a month, my mate Fred will join me for two weeks in Malaysia. Four weeks is pretty short to do Sumbawa, Lombok, Bali, Jawa and Sumatra.

It’s time for the muezzin to sing again, and for the sun to go down, as I watch the boats in the bay bobbing up and down with the waves. Finally the temperature is dropping a bit, and I welcome the nice cool breeze coming from the Komodo islands on the horizon. I didn’t get the chance to see the dragons, the famous “varans”, too bad the trip across is so expensive again. And I regret the fact it rained most of the time on the way down here, I was told Flores is one of the prettiest island in Indonesia. Oh well, I can always come back.

In fact, I think I will.

Distance to-day: 20km, total: 22408km.